The Girl in the Woods

Chapter 15

              Geralt brought Beth up to his old room and lay her down on the bed. It was a simple bedchamber, Witcher's were not exactly brought up in luxury, but it instilled a kind of peace in him. This was a place he wouldn't have to watch his back with every breath, this was the closest thing to a home as he could remember. Geralt pulled the blanket up to cover her and kneeled down beside the bed for a moment, watching her face for any signs of change. He sighed when there was none and brushed aside a few of the stray hairs that had sprung free from her borrowed leather band. The Witcher leaned forward slowly and hesitated for a moment before placing a kiss onto the sleeping woman's forehead and exiting the room quickly. His mentor, Vesemir, was waiting for him in the Great Hall.

              Seated in front of a roaring fire, Vesemir drank deeply from a tankard of ale, another sat parallel to him, waiting for Geralt to return. While the two Witcher's had many similarities, one being the color and style of their hair, Vesemir was much older than Geralt. Geralt could remember when he had first arrived at Kaer Morhen as a child, and frightened. While his Mentor did not show excessive affection towards the wolf cubs in his care, they knew that he was deeply invested in their lives. Each Witcher that Vesemir trained after taking over leading the school looked to him as a father figure.

The younger Witcher grabbed the ale immediately upon reaching the table and settled into the wooden chair with a thump.

"You didn't come alone." Vesemir spoke, eyeing his pupil questioningly.

"I needed to take her somewhere safe," Geralt said, looking at the crackling fire instead of the eyes of the older Witcher.

"Kaer Morhen is not what it once was." The old man grunted.

"No. But it is all I have." Geralt spoke back with an edge.

"Tell me the story." Vesemir prompted.

Geralt leaned back in the chair, figuring he might as well get comfortable.

"She came to me from another world not too long ago. I was fresh off a bruxa hunt in Redania and camping in the woods when I found her, pinned to a tree and slashed by wolves." Vesemir settled back as well, listening intently to his pupil's words.

"She had been disguised as an elf and I thought she was one until she tore her ears right off." The feight twitch of a smile hit his lips.

"Well that is certainly odd." Vesemir chuckled. "You say she's from another world? That's certainly far-fetched." The older man argued with another long drink of ale.

"I've enlisted the help of a mage, she is researching portals in Aedd Gynvael over winter. It seems strange but she is truly not of any of the Northern Kingdoms or anywhere in the near beyond at the least." Geralt leaned forward and rested his elbows on the tabletop. "There was an accident with some Bandits outside of Rinde, she was shot. She was going to die and I couldn't let that happen. I had captured a Djinn and used one of the wishes to heal her, she's been sleeping since, there's something strange and magical happening to her, my medallion hasn't stilled since the attack."

"A Djinn you say?" Vesemir was surprised to hear of one of the elemental beings, he had never encountered one himself, only hearing tales from other Witchers and literature he used for teaching. "What happened with the other wishes?" the older Witcher asked.

"The quest was a favor to the mage I enlisted to help Beth, I'm sure she has used them for whatever she wanted to." Geralt decided to leave out the part of the story where the sorceress wished to use the being in order to regain her womb and become a mother.

"How long has she been asleep?"

"Almost a week." Geralt answered him, downing the rest of the tankard in one gulp. He wished he could get his hands on something stronger.